1) Drink lots of fluids. Nb. Fluids do not mean a four quid can of warm Kestrel lager bought from a scouser in a Bacofoil shellsuit, or an optic shot of tequila from the fetid rucksack of a Kiwi called Skye Bone. Nor for that matter a quack nostrum bought from a hippy in a tee-pee, meant to align your Chi-Chi. What Pandas have to do with mental wellbeing is beyond me, unless it gets you rutting in a portaloo like Russell Brand on an Oyster and Viagra pastie. However, the ‘drinking lots of fluids’ tip becomes decidedly suspect once you are desperate for a slash at 4am and cocooned within all your clothes, sleeping bag and lock-like tent zips.
2) Always wash your hands. Festival Portaloo clichés are many but then so are Tick - Bourne Encephalitis, Legionnaires Disease and Diphtheria. And as for catching something from Nicki’s Minaj! Just don’t go there.
3) Never rope/tape off your campsite. Many will and then you can mock their little Empire building tendencies, guilt free. By the end of the festival the overzealous land fascists will have used up so much Duck and Gaffa tape that they have to abandon the whole sorry mess and buy a new tent. Having said that, Tracy Emin’s ‘Tent’ won first prize at the Big Chav Festival in 2004, where she received a golden nose peg.
4) Eat freshly cooked food, which is thoroughly cooked and still piping hot. So this rules out every catering van on site. United fans may like to try those lovely looking prawn sandwiches over there though. Look! Just over there! In the sunshine.
5) Try to catch The Paul Simon One-Man Band. Basically a retired civil servant called Colin who plays all the big Graceland tunes on his one-man band. He has to make the Ump-Tsa, Ump-Tsa, Ump-Tsa noises with his mouth though, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo through a happy hardcore vocoder. As the Pinner Gazette noted, ‘He has diamonds on the soles of his Birkenstocks.’
6) Take a tent with a lock. There is nothing worse than returning back at night to find the contents gone and your canvas abode doubling up as a Portaloo. Coprophiliacs may disagree. Ibiza’s Zoo Project establishes a new colony at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park. Take a cage with a lock, unless being mauled by a large feral cat is your idea of ‘Avin it Large!
7) Fish and Shellfish can be suspect. Uncooked shellfish such as oysters are a particular hazard. Diarrhoea is a serious consequence. Just imagine a cat flap trying to hold back the Hoover Dam!
8) Take care not to burn. Stay out of the sun at midday. Use what shade is available, unless it is the comedy tent. You will invariably be party to a failed Drama student talking about the time he smoked banana skins and the ensuing hilarity. Sunstroke is preferable. Do also try to remember that Stephen Hawking Unplugged is not a comedy act.
9) Dressing up has become de rigueur at festivals these days, with everyone from small children to pensioners donning the garb of the faux thespian’s wardrobe and acting the giddy goat. Here are some suggestions from iTwat Costumiers of Dalston. Milfuence Fotheringaye, takes us through the costumes of choice to be seen in at this year’s Festivals.
• Nell Gwynn Queen of Schnauzers - Combining the burlesque of prozzy, the regal of mythical, the manual of papier mache breast pumps, and the orange canine of dog taxidermy, this costume will literally have them eating out of your syphilitic hand.
• Donkey’s Knob – Your mate’s will love the ‘ironic boudoir fitting’ for many years to come. You’ll love walking round Bestival like a right Donkey's Knob in your phallic moulded body piece. (see also Shakespearean Bull’s Pizzle.
• Vintage Tramp – Out vintage all your vintage vintageness by dressing up as a genuine vintage tramp from the 70’s. Army great coat, orange rope, litre of meths, one shoe off and a faecal stench. However, do be selective at which festival you choose to attend and rock this look. You may find yourself outnumbered at the St Leonard’s Music Festival and your originality somewhat diminished.
• Madchester Baggy Man – The reformed Stone Roses will be ‘the’ festival band to see this year, whilst the Happy Mondays, Charlatans, James, Inspiral Carpets and The Cressa Span all play festivals too. Dermo Dermoddywoddy’s Haberdashery of Moston will be happy to kit you out from the back of a Salford Van Hire transit. Costume required: - Barbour Acid Fell walking anorak from Millets, voluminous Joe Bloggs keks sewn and stitched by candlelight by the exploited third world children of Ardwick, pudding bowl basin and pair of safety scissors for that genuine Mary Quant meets Black Adder 1st haircut. Also included, pair of Chevallereau 1970 Kicker ‘jeanboots’ , with natural rubber eyelets, contrast stitching panels, appliques, flower shape tag and added dog shit in the crepe soles. Lastly a pair of Y fronts full of scuttling crabs to make you walk like a scuttling crab.
• One Direction Injection Infection – (requires 5 people) A ten-legged boy band zombie collective, you will sway around festival sites with your arms protruding outwards whilst moaning pitifully. Wearing Zombiefied makeup, sandy ragged jodhpurs, blood-stained bow ties and voluminously coiffured hair you will pretend to infect festival goers with the bland inguinal bubo virus whence forth they shall follow you to the hilt and swear blind allegiance to your zoonotic disease music.
• Kylie’s Rear - wander round like a great sequinned arse
10) If you get lost, stay calm. Walk towards the main stage, blag a back stage pass, blag a stage pass, then collect a microphone from a roadie with eczema. Stride purposefully up to the front of the stage and start up a ‘call-and-response’ routine a la David Rodigan MBE. Once you’ve made statements about the economic situation, political prisoners and the history of Aba Shanti, the crowd will love you so much and they’ll be ‘like totes on your side’ that you can just ask them where you are.
11) Avoid the legal high stalls. It all tastes like sand and tree bark and the only enlightened experience you will have is that you need to drink the equivalent of a paddling pool to recover. Head shop heads are renowned for the creative names for their products – Dragon’s Quiff, Sinstro’s Brain Scribe, Vulgate, and La Mort Artu Mitsu – whereas in reality they should be called, Liquidised Cork Matting, Ronseal Fine Sur Pollyfilla, Kiln Dried Sawdust, and Grated Kumquat Skin.
12) Befriend a foreign tourist. They always have nice biscuits.
13) Avoid itinerant Kiosk traders selling, Dodo Pate, Powdered Egg Omelettes, Arctic Monkey Roll and Spam Fritters. Ironically, round-the-back of the self-same kiosk, people are quite happy to ingest brick dust, rat poison, Castrol GTX and White Lightning.
14) Be aware of insect bites in tropical areas of the festival site. Beware tick bourne diseases and mosquitoes. Heather Mills should be aware of termites. Womad and Glyndebourne are now selling insects as a sustainable food source- cockroach paella anyone? Vegfest is still on the fence with regard to this as opposed to said termites who are actually in the fence.
15) Take a good book. Hours camped in front of the main stage waiting for the fireworks display and having to endure Cold Chisel can be really tedious.
16) Check out the reformed Stone Roses. Grown men would sell their Pollock spattered lawnmowers to experience this so stay ‘til the end ‘cos ‘ It ain’t over ‘til the flat laddy sings.’ (see #9 for dress code)
17) Rabies jabs may seem extreme but if you’ve ever experienced the moshpit at Download it is highly recommended.
18) You can easily spot the ‘It’ Girls. They always wear cowboy boots, Yoga T-shirts, Sombreros, 25 different wristbands (backstage and charity type), a Deadmaus’s tail, and a wilful look of disdain. They also carry a Libertines smack-chic kit and a potential Heat Magazine feature in their head.
19) Invariably wherever you camp, you will be next to a group of Welsh lads who shout, ‘Bollocks!’ quite a lot at four in the morning (see also two men arguing over who taught the other how to make heroin. Keith Allen, Why? And The Horrors new Trip Hop direction.
20) Don’t get really badly sunburnt. The medics will cover you in this treacley ointment type stuff and people will think you are a cross between a tramp, a pervert and Jodi Marsh and will avoid you at all costs.
21) Lanyard, Lanyard, Lanyard. In the Kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king; in the kingdom of the Festival the king wears lots of Lanyards, like a deeply disturbed insecure Olympic medallist, …..with lots of Lanyards!
22) Ever since Jay-Z ruled Glastonbury and made Noel Gallagher sound like a parochial teddy boy at a capital punk gig, hip hop has been here to stay at the festival. Be sure to catch Wobbly Scoundrel at Hatfield in the Park, Puffy Fetlock at Pebsham Tip, PI$H at the Portaloo Festival and Nicky’s Minaj backstage everywhere.
23) Festival First-Timers well worth checking out and telling the grandchildren about?
• PI$H - a mixtape of Cereal Bowl Ballads landed the Bristol rapper a hefty £500 record deal. Like Woody Guthrie rapping with Afrodizzie in a Diamanda Galas encrusted paddling pool.
• Hobbema – Feted by fetid retro-rock revolutionaries, Hobbema are set to be huge this year, not least because of lead singer, Mamma Wine Cask’s incredible vocal performances. She possesses a voice dripping in treacly black Cutter’s Choice phleghm and a soul as wide as a Dudley bus.
• Sodoma Congeal - The leaders of the new sub-sub-genre of rock ‘Black Pudding Metal’ undoubtedly call a grave digger’s spade a spade, with their lo-fi bluesy horror confessionals about the hardening of the arteries and cadaveric chambers of coagulated pig blood.
• Honthorst – Their debut album, Scoundrel Bus Mechanic, recalled the taught perfection of early Lieutenant Pigeon, while they’re promising a more ‘Glam’ follow-up. In frontman Archie Rodchenko, they also boast a hateful prick pip of a tosser.
